Review: Alphas – If Memory Serves

The Alphas team continued to search for evil Alpha William Parish, who is very Wolverine like, and Lord Of the Rings actor Sean Astin guest stared in this week’s episode, “If Memory Serves.”Warning: Spoilers Ahead!
Can I just say that Alphas is doing a wonderful job at getting guest stars? First, Summer Glau, and now, Sean Astin. Lucky for us, it seems as if both will be back next week!
The episode started with Alpha agents Bill, Hicks, and newcomer Kat rounding up suspects who were associated with Parish, an evil Alpha who never seems to age, and giving them to Nina to push. She eventually got some information about a farmhouse.
Dr. Rosen, the team leader, sent Kat and a brooding Hicks to check out the house. Of course, this lead to hilarity. Since Kat is unable to retain memories, Dr. Rosen has her recording everything, which she did almost the entire time.
As the title suggests, the episode primarily dealt with memories—from Kat trying to remember her childhood and her mother, to Hicks wanting to relive his with Dani, who was tragically killed by Parish.
When they arrived at the house, they found Mitchell, played by Sean Astin. Mitchell is like a Total Recall Alpha. He is able to live in other people’s memories and place other people in someone else’s. It’s revealed later that Parish uses him as a personal memory recorder. Rosen took advantage of this, seeing that Parish isn’t a total psychopath, but instead has some humanity left. So, he and Cam went back to the farm house Mitchell was found in and burned it down. At the end of the episode, they placed Mitchell in Building 7, essentially a prison for Alphas.
Most of the episode was the Kat and Hicks adventure hour. After they freed Mitchell from the house, The Caretaker kept trying to kill them. No matter how many bones he broke, he was able to repair them by drinking loads of milk. Got milk, anyone?
Since The Caretaker was so dense from drinking all of that milk, Kat decided to throw him in the lake, causing him to sink; and in the process, saving Hicks and Mitchell. He was able to help Kat remember the lady in the blue dress, whom she thought was her mom, but it ended up being a hoax and she was just remembering a commercial.
Kat is by far the best addition to the team since well…ever. She brings lightness to the show that was desperately missing in season one, and I hope they keeps her around permanently.
Meanwhile, the other members of the team were mostly scattered. Gary spent most of the episode in the hospital due to his mom having a stroke; Rachel and Dr. Rosen, who continued his downward spiral of despair from losing his daughter Dani, were looking into the missing shipment of photo stimulators that increases an alpha’s ability; and Nina was getting into trouble with the Senator overlooking the taskforce.
So, it looks as if the team is going to have to locate all of the missing photo stimulators, and in doing so, try to flush out Parish from hiding.
“If Memory Serves” was a great episode that continued the season two magic of Alphas.Rating: 4 out of 5 stars